Jane Joritz-Nakagawa

                        from “wild black lake” 

my heart is tired and goes to sleep
my eyes were pious
or they were pies
ending in sighs in a skin of water

face of the earth 
all alone in heaven
the duplex never debonair
in rooms we exchange air for air

[i wondered what
it would be like
to sink into that wide black ocean
and never emerge]

stuck in a wall of song
regimes rush to fill the emptiness
the place i left
cascading intimate theory

lopsided applause
an example of bone
flowers controlled by blunt formulae
ending in effigy

ebbed from me
a naked screen
that touches me briefly
inaudibly

distances between artifice and
real objects serve as 
obstacles above glittering forests
in faraway debris

i become stone
enclosed by narration
hoping to melt
stem by stem

vehement ceremonies
for smiling gang members
colic latchkey
smeared on toast

concrete seepage
on the brink of artificiality
buried confessions
of dusty regimes

an excerpt cluster
carp motionless in a pond
torn red paper lanterns
scorched flowerbeds

almighty knees
in stately industry
collar of wind blows
a swallowed patch

figures leaning out windows
heels moving on a staircase
stiff floorboards
doubt waiting to be born

hot summer afternoon
exits closed
sudden belief in erasure
in a vast room of wilderness

hardened shoreline
a chimney of hula
volcanic discipline
guru gropes

dewy childhood
of slanted laughter
doomed to compose a moldy elegy
for muddy clouds

grating shipwreck in metallic silence
brushes my dry abdomen
a rice cake blockade
staggers cells of summer kites

tornado of dialogue
all failure begins to flower
false stony wandering
on a botched path

near a dismal fence
vanishing voices greet you
your body momentarily warm
my voice diagonal

formal grapheme
stalks clothesline pick up
a suffix of kidnap
shawls gallop

ivory delta
bucolic wave
a separate developmental line
in bareback fallout

vicarious geography
unending carnivore
sickening clouds
see you in court

squirrel on wire
rocks deep within
unhealing gesture
lost brick

a cancelled self
shady façade of fences
transparent street
dries up

a low birth
the rock’s experience of me
stars in my brain
along a greying bridge

my skin tears
butterflies of today
something is wrong
a waltz for the blind

perched on a frame
a muddled face
plaza at midnight
blinking away

spoonful of regret
shadow chatters loudly
birds become flowers
from far away

though warm it snows
on the back of a painting
my blouse unbuttoned
by a strong wind

the wind outside the mind
post mortem
angle of endless teeth
resurrect the quivering sun

protected by the forest
doll trapped in the house
my arm twisted
things to do

smoothing of space
millions of morals
womb for words
see enclosed brochure

perverse shopping
soldiers came home
what to do
exit wound

things not to do
corpse like
raybans and corncob pipe
endlessly old

the lapse in my eyes
in front of the bodega
catastrophic sandbanks
rest in peace

picture a girl
standing in rain
arrested by the mob
banal illusions

celebrity against gravity
function of language
internal hysteric
microscopic adventure

weird black lake
territorial mimesis
exterior milieu
dialectic protection

cellular syntax
slow labor of bodies
musty rupture
in analogous time

enunciation of voidedness
perpetual code
abutment aggregate
polyphonic elastic

interlink asignifying
motion of noise
presides over the world
quilted and axiomatic

elegant bird
under automobile tires
replying eagerly
a sun sinks

ambushed breasts
in wild silence
wintry carnival
of social systems

silhouette in a window
the night overtakes
waiting for a sign
becomes increasingly still

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